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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

About that GOP GOTV

Bill Leonard, the recently reelected Republican Board of Equalization candidate, has a blog post wondering what happened to the Victory '06 get-out-the-vote effort.

I had been excited about it. I saw what microtargeting accomplished for the President in Ohio two years ago and was eager to replicate that success in California. That excitement faded as results were tallied.

Accusations have been flying that the CRP’s Victory ’06 was actually Arnold ’06, Period. I have heard that the CRP’s phone banks used scripts written by and for the Governor, leaving the rest of the ticket unmentioned. There are rumors that there was mischief with CRP door-hangars because the Governor and the party disagreed over ballot measures. There is concern that the Victory ’06 GOTV effort focused on voters who may not even have been Republicans. At this point, such accusations remain just that: undocumented statements with a tinge of bitterness following a brutal defeat of most of the party ticket. Therefore, what is needed is full disclosure by the CRP leadership, a detailed political audit of how this campaign was waged. The party members, donors and volunteers deserve to know the full truth and the actual numbers. Specifically, how did the CRP spend $20 million? How many voters were contacted, by whom, where were they, and what message was delivered to them? Can we identify why some of our biggest GOP counties appear to have had a much lower GOP turnout than usual? Did the party organizations there rely on Victory ’06 to turn-out the base instead of their usual, grassroots effort?